If You are a Black Teenager in Florida, Just get the F–k Out

Florida: America’s dong. Sun, sand and white trash. Love the blacks that play for the football team of their choice, but don’t want them anywhere else. I am certainly not implying the black teenager has no right to live in Florida, but I’m a realist. If you can’t walk down the street talking on your phone or go cool at the mall with your friends while listening to a little music, it is time to skeedaddle. Hit the road Jack, and don’t ya come back. Sad state of affairs indeed. When you can’t do everyday American things in your own backyard without some racist lunatic pulling a piece and shooting you over it, it might be high time to seek greener pastures. The Stand Your Ground law is a real gem. This is the perfect platform for the aforementioned mentally unstable racist white asshole to murder a black kid, then back fill the story and paint himself however he wishes. The fuckhead that shot into the car full of kids in Jacksonville actually had the stones to scream “I’m the fucking victim here!”. Never found the gun he supposedly “saw” the teenagers possess. At least he’s going away for a spell, that is if his attorney fails in the appeal he is comically filing saying his client is “still in shock this all happened”. I hope when he arrives in the joint the brothers find him, quick. That other scumbag is walking the streets on the story he concocted about being forced to murder the insidious black teen who was terrorizing his neighborhood by walking on the sidewalk with a hood up to protect against falling precipitation. The horror. Stand Your Ground = Murder a Black and Claim You had No Choice.

For a short spell, back there in the 1990′s, I was a teen. A lily white teen in small town Midwest America. Played on the football team. Had really short hair. Tried, but mostly failed, to score chicks. Was on the honor roll. Didn’t do drugs. Drove a kick ass Honda Accord. Round about 1993, at 15 years old, my father rather irresponsibly bought me a big ass pair of Infinity speakers for my bedroom with a gnarley receiver. I had a huge window in my bedroom on the third floor of our house that opened out onto the side yard and street beyond. I would, with frequency, terrorize the neighbors with music played at a volume that was rude at best, criminal at worst. One fine summer afternoon in between two-a-day football sessions I was amping up for the evening practice by blaring something aggressive on my stereo. My mom was outside gardening, inexplicably allowing me to noise pollute a 6 square block area of our bucolic town. A neighbor finally took umbrage to my noise terrorism and approached the property screaming at me to turn it down. I didn’t hear a damn word but my mom did. Whether instinct or latent white trash streak is unclear, but she went the route of screaming back at the neighbor rather than tell her kid to dial the knob back down from 11. They had it out on the lawn and I remained More Human than Human in my attic room oblivious to the whole scene. If that neighbor had taken out a gun and murdered either my mom or me, they would have gone to and been raped in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison without passing Go or collecting $200. No “I was standing my ground” bullshit. Me and my honky ass rural Midwest friends used to walk the streets uttering swear words at loud volume, smoke cigarettes (well not me, just never developed a taste for the bottom of old hooker boots), dribble basketballs on the concrete and generally be obnoxious assholes. We would drive around town in our cars to go to the mall or nowhere at all with stereos and speakers we purchased for one purpose and one purpose only: Be loud as shit. Blaring Snoop Dogg and White Zombie and Dr. Dre out our windows and not care which old white curmudgeon it pissed off. That is what teenagers do, they piss people off. You can pick fights with them over it if you are a complete prick and have nothing else going on and your life sucks shit and you just want to rage at something that hasn’t changed in preceding milennia and won’t in the future. If that’s your bag then red that face, pulse those neck veins, and get in there boy. But you can’t fucking shoot them with guns. These kids aren’t being shot because their behavior is atypical or because they were the aggressor in an attack that could be perceived as life-threatening. They are being murdered because they are black and the state of Florida has provided a convenient out for unstable, racist criminals to defend themselves against the murder. Plain and simple. Luckily the monster that shot up the car full of kids is going away and hopefully for the rest of his life. The fact that he could still play this card is troubling. Jesus H. Christ, if you are going to shoot up teens for walking while looking suspicious and listening to loud music in a car, may as well fire off a few shots at the sun for shining or the bee for stinging.

About Zach

Male homo sapien. Warrior poet. I live in Chicago with one wife, one offspring, and Scout the dog. I enjoy various stuff. Besides skinny skiing and going to bullfights on acid, I also enjoy running, reading, drinking, eating and procrastinating on many things, such as starting this blog. I have a mom, a dad, and a younger brother who recently produced a sister-in-law. I'm the only person in my family, sister-in-law included, who doesn't have a post-graduate degree. I guess that makes me special.
I grew up in a small to medium sized town in the middle of Ohio. In fact the even smaller town next door has a sign which reads "The Geographic Center of Ohio". Given this is what they choose to boast you can only imagine how exciting that town is. My town is infinitely cooler. For example on weekend nights people from my town and the surrounding villages and hamlets converge on the public square to "cruise" in their souped-up mini trucks, some bearing Confederate flags, despite growing up and living rather safely north of the Mason-Dixon line. This is high-minded stuff we're talking about here. I graduated sometime during the Clinton presidency from the local high school where I played football and participated in absolutely nothing else. This strategy paid huge dividends when I applied to numerous colleges on the eastern seaboard which were highly selective. When you show up to the admissions table with "HIgh School Football and Nothing Else" on your application, you get respect.
After graduating from Ohio University with a degree in Economics that I've used for absolutely nothing, I moved to Boston. Boston is a lovely city. I was doing things I'm not proud of for beer money and I left after 16 months. My next move was to Chicago and 10+ years later there I still reside.
I write this blog for therapeutic reasons. Much like some people paint to relax or smoke crack to unwind after a stressful day, I record my thoughts on Al Gore's World Wide Web for 9 friends, 4 family members, 1 person who accidentally clicked through after an unsuccessful Google search for something else, and a guy named Patriot1 who lives in a silver Air Stream in the Nevada desert and broadcasts his own radio show.
Is there a point to all of this? I doubt it. Years ago and in a galaxy far, far away (College Park, Maryland, then Athens, Ohio) I was toying with the idea of being a journalism major. I enjoyed writing so it seemed the obvious fit. Then I attended career day and learned that journalism majors could look forward to a salary of $EA,TSH.IT per year with the promise of a fatal heart attack at 47 years of age. I'm not falling for that trick, I told them (them being no one, and told being saying it in my own mind in the shower). Approximately 15 years later here I sit declared the big winner in that battle: I never made any money doing anything else and now I'm writing entirely for free. So suck balls, journalism career day.
The views expressed in this website are mine and mine entirely. I don't wish to be an even bigger black eye to my family than I probably already am. As a result of this I will never be able to run for public office and I accept that reality. But this website is a very dignified, well-dressed skeleton full of witty retorts and honorable deeds compared to the disheveled, stenching, staggering and loud skeletons who would come marching out of the closet to White Zombie's "Thunderkiss '65" if they ever unearthed the college years.
So enjoy your train ride, your hangover day at work, your AA meeting or your dump. I'm here to serve.